The NASA Engineer on a Feminist Voyage | YouTube: (Video, November 2015) “Broadly spends “A Day With” Denisse Arranda, Venezuelan transplant, Virginia Beach resident, dance enthusiast, and top NASA engineer. With a major project on the horizon, and a husband far far away, Denisse’s life requires tight choreography.”

Gender Bias Simulator: “The simulation projects gender ratios for a theoretical company with eight hierarchical tiers, starting at entry-level (level 1) and proceeding to executive level (level 8). Gender bias is reflected in performance-review scores, which are used to determine who stays, who leaves, and who gets promoted.”

It’s not your fault. | Medium: “A recent study reported that 60% of women in Silicon Valley have been sexually harassed. Of those, 65% have received advances directly from a superior. These statistics caught me by surprise, though they probably shouldn’t have — I am one of them.”

Face-Palming Over Apple’s Diversity | Autostraddle: “Apple seems to truly believe that its vast plethora of Diversity & Inclusion efforts — and they are impressive, with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in helping NCWIT launch Latinas in Technology, providing scholarships to and hiring from public and private HBCUs, and doing their darnedest to inspire kids from an early age with unfettered access to hands-on STEM programs — gives them a pass to gloss over the severe lack of parity at the top.”

Hello Barbie isn’t just creepy. She is also pretty sexist. | Fusion: “Hello Barbie is programmed with eight different phrases to strike up a conversation about style, while she’s programmed with just one for computers. Sure she is also programmed to say she loves math and science, but while math is “cool,” fashion, according to Barbie, is so much more.”

Beware the Rule-Following Coworker, Harvard Study Warns | The Washington Post: : “In the continuum of toxic workers, there are those who are simply annoying and might just be a bad fit for an organization. At the other end are those who engage in harassment, bullying, fraud, theft or even violence in the workplace. The study zeroed in on those at the most extreme of the extreme who were fired for their toxic behavior.”

When Teamwork Doesn’t Work For Women | New York Times: “Ms. Sarsons discovered one group of female economists who enjoyed the same career success as men: those who work alone. Specifically, she says that “women who solo author everything have roughly the same chance of receiving tenure as a man.” So any gender differences must be because of the differential treatment of men and women who work collaboratively.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

This is another round of Geek feminism classifieds. If you’re looking to hire women, find some people to participate in your study, find female speakers, or just want some like-minded folk to join your open source project, this is the thread for you!

Here’s how it works:

Geeky subjects only. We take a wide view of geekdom, but if your thing isn’t related to an obviously geeky topic, you’ll probably want to give a bit of background on why the readers of Geek Feminism would be interested.

Explain what you’re looking for. Even if it’s not a job ad, think of it like one: what is the activity/role in question, and what would it involve? What is the profile of people you’re looking for?

GF has international readership, so please be sure to indicate the location if you’re advertising a job position, conference, or other thing where the location matters. Remember that city acronyms aren’t always known world-wide and lots of cities share names, so be as clear as possible! (That is, don’t say “SF[O]” or “NYC” or “Melb”, say “San Francisco, USA”, “New York City, USA” or “Melbourne, Australia”.) And if you can provide travel/relocation assistance, we’d love to know about it.

Keep it legal. Most jurisdictions do not allow you to (eg.) advertise jobs for only people of a given gender. So don’t do that. If you are advertising for something that falls into this category, think of this as an opportunity to boost the signal to women who might be interested.

Provide a way for people to contact you, such as your email address or a link to apply in the case of job advertisements. (The email addresses entered in the comment form here are not public, so readers won’t see them.)

Keep an eye on comments here, in case people ask for clarification or more details. (You can subscribe to comments via email or RSS.)

If you’d like some more background/tips on how to reach out to women for your project/event/whatever, take a look at Recruiting women on the Geek Feminism Wiki.)

The Elephant in the Valley | Women in Tech: “The inspiration for this survey came out of the incredible conversation from the Ellen Pao & KPCB trial. What we realized is that while many women shared similar workplace stories, most men were simply shocked and unaware of the issues facing women in the workplace. In an effort to correct the massive information disparity, we decided to get the data and the stories. We focused on five main areas including: Feedback & Promotion, Inclusion, Unconscious biases, Motherhood, and Harassment & Safety. We asked 200+ women focusing on women with at least 10 years of experience. The survey is largely bay area with 91% in the bay area/silicon valley right now.”

What did we learn in School today? An Outreachy Retrospective | Sucheta Ghoshal (12 January): “Looking ahead, I think the practice of collective learning that Free/Open Source communities organically follow, will become indispensable in order to effectively confront dominations marked by “race”, “gender”, “sexuality”, and “class”. In a new and feminist approach towards computing, collectives, as we define them, will become the medium in which inclusive participation will take shape. And in consequence, a change in conversation shall happen, the crux of which shall be to render visibility to the invisible, make a presence of all that has been absent all this while.”

Gamers have become the new religious right | Jef Rouner at Houston Press (14 January): “At the heart of the movement to shut down game critique is an appeal to tradition and purity. Discussing how sexualized avatars contribute to the objectification of women in the real world or how playing games with sexist content makes sexist behavior more likely gets framed as an attack, similar to how women entering the workplace in greater numbers in the 1980s was often framed as an attack on the traditional gender roles celebrated in The Bible. Whenever women or other minorities speak up against systems that oppress them it challenges the idea that the current norm is good, and if the norm is not good, then we are bad for having supported or participated in it.”

What would feminist data visualization look like? | Catherine D’Ignazio at MIT Center for civic media (20 December 2015): “While there is a lot of hype about data visualization, and a lot of new tools for doing it (my colleague Rahul Bhargava and I have counted over 500!), fewer people are thinking critically about the politics and ethics of representation. This, combined with a chart-scared general public, means that data visualizations wield a tremendous amount of rhetorical power. Even when we rationally know that data visualizations do not represent “the whole world”, we forget that fact and accept charts as facts because they are generalized, scientific and seem to present an expert, neutral point of view. What’s the issue? Feminist standpoint theory would say that the issue is that all knowledge is socially situated and that the perspectives of oppressed groups including women, minorities and others are systematically excluded from “general” knowledge.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Science and gender: Scientists must work harder on equality | Nature (December 21 2015): “Every major criterion on which scientists are evaluated, for hiring, promotion, talk invitations or prizes, has been shown to be biased in favour of (white) men. These include authorship credit, paper citations, funding, recruitment, mentoring and tenure. For example, although women publish fewer papers than men, there is some evidence that on average they are longer and more complete, and that this difference vanishes if one corrects for funding level and research-group size.”

Power of Asian superheroes | The Malaysian Insider (January 7 2016): “We grew up with window books – stories through which we learnt about other worlds, especially white, Western worlds with fireplaces, summer holidays, marmalade, garages and frocks. Only recently have we begun encountering mirror books – stories in which we see ourselves and our worlds reflected. From the 1990s up to a few years ago, we grew up in Malaysia, but we never saw ourselves or characters like us in storybooks.”

If You Give a Librarian a Cookie… | Rule Number One: A Library Blog (January 5 2016): “what other parts of ourselves do we have to deny in order to be taken seriously in the workplace? Is it worth it? What does it mean to elide parts of yourself so that you aren’t just described as “the girl who bakes”? At what point does my work speak for itself and I don’t have to worry about this anymore?”

Let’s End the False War Between Free Speech and Hate Speech | Re/Code (January 7 2016): “If you loudly tell a woman she deserves to be raped for speaking her mind on any subject in the public square, at a party or at work, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get ejected from there and, at the very least, you’ll be subject to much-deserved derision and censure. Not so on the Internet, where such talk is all too common and much too tolerated. Which is why Intel, Vox Media, Re/code and the Born This Way Foundation are coming together to co-create Hack Harassment (#hackharassment), a new, collaborative initiative to fight online harassment and provide safer, more inclusive online experiences.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Our Turn: The trouble with whiteboard interviews | Concord Monitor (December 20): “The trend toward “whiteboard interviews” constitutes a form of hazing, bound to attract only certain personalities and demographics to tech jobs. Members of stereotyped groups such as women and people of color are particularly vulnerable to the use of this interview technique in fields dominated by white males. This vulnerability is backed by years of research in psychology but is currently ignored by tech companies.”

[CW: descriptions of harassment] The House That Silence Built: Harassment in the Comics Industry | Comics Alliance (December 21): “If multiple reports of harassment and even assault aren’t enough for a publisher to take meaningful action (and I do mean firing here; the consequence for assaulting someone at an industry event should be losing your job, and that should not be a controversial stance) we can only imagine what smaller indignities and attitudes women and men face in this industry.”

[CW: descriptions of harassment] The Developer Formerly Known as FreeBSDGirl | Randi.io (December 31): “When someone has to leave an IRC channel and stop going to conferences because they are scared of a person, this is a sign that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. It’s rare for people to speak up about negative behavior. If one person is uncomfortable, chances are that there’s more community members who are having issues with them but not speaking up.”

Why Feminist Criticism Is Necessary for Video Games as an Art Form |The Mary Sue (December 24): “What I find especially bizarre about anti-feminist gamers is that they are harming the case that video games are art. In fighting feminist criticism, they were also trying to stop gaming reaching an important milestone. Other art forms had their feminists, so why not video games? The anti-feminist gamers wanted their hobby to be treated as an art form, but were not willing to allow the scrutiny that came with that distinction.”

Star Wars: The Force Awakens spoilers ahead

Rey is not a role model for little girls (major spoilers ahead) | Mike Adamick (December 21): “No, Rey is not the perfect role model for little girls. She’s a role model for boys. Indeed, she’s the perfect role model for little boys, and a whole bunch of supposedly grown ass men as well. She’s the role model they need. Frankly, she’s the role model our expanding universe of epic sexist bullshittery needs.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

The Importance of Feminism in Pop Culture, Republican Debate Edition | Satiricalifragilistic: “What I will say is that what we see in media has a huge effect not only on how we live our individual lives, but on what we perceive is the “normal,” default experince with which everyone is supposed to identify, and that the populace at large is assumed to support. A remark like Christie’s takes as its starting assumption that the American voter expects a “normal” family to have a working father and a mother who focuses on the children, and that the roles of these two (heterosexual & married) parents are distinct from each other.”

This Is Why You Don’t Have a Girlfriend: The Story of a Nerdy Lady Dating Online | The Mary Sue: “I have met quite a few lovely guys who identify as geeks, dweebs, nerds, or fanboys, and who have conversed with me as a person first and foremost. All I’m asking is that you think about the message you’re sending when you approach a woman whether for romantic reasons or for friendship. By questioning the very thing that might have attracted you to her, you ruin any chance of finding out if she might be interested in you the human being and not just you the nerd.”

The False Promise of Meritocracy | The Atlantic: (December 3) “American beliefs about the rightness of meritocratic ideals often leads to the belief that those ideals are what guides society. But research shows that a real commitment to meritocracy requires understanding that America hasn’t gotten there—at least not yet. It is this insight that leads to the adoption of practices that will ultimately result in a society where merit truly does equal ability + effort.”

Nerd Culture is Not a Contest | The Mary Sue: “None of us has any right to judge the legitimacy of anyone else’s level of geek. Fandom isn’t a contest, and the sooner we stop treating it that way, the sooner we can go back to arguing over real issues like whether we need a Miles Morales Spider-Man movie more than another Peter Parker one*.”

Gameplay | Rookie: “Naomi McArthur and Kristina Swanenburg, two researchers and game designers at Riot (their official titles are “behavioral scientists”), sat down with me to answer some questions about stymying harassment through design and trying to initiate friendships in online spaces where people are anonymous.”

Contempt Culture | The Particular Finest: “This was a bombshell. I’d been loudly criticising the language and, through that criticism, implying that people using the language weren’t as good me, weren’t good programmers. And suddenly I was thinking about all the myriad ways that someone with that background would feel othered by me, like they didn’t belong and weren’t welcome in the communities I was a part of. All of the ways in which I was actively participating in the exclusion of women from STEM.”

Blog: My First Ever Tech(ish) Conference | Peerlyst: “When the session ended, I approached the woman to thank her for asking a question in what was clearly an unsupportive environment. I found her surrounded by a small group of women who echoed my support – and surprise – about the crowd’s reaction. “

#HackAHairDryer: another attempt to make science appeal to women falls flat | The Guardian: (December 10) “With all this talk about how to get girls interested in science and maths, it should not be forgotten that the job does not end there. In my field of the academic life sciences, unlike in engineering and the physical sciences, early interest and recruitment isn’t the problem, with gender parity at the PhD levels and even into the early postdoctoral trainee years. It is retention that’s the issue: fewer than 20% of biology professors are women. It’s not just academia that suffers from this problem: the percentages of women in leadership positions in biotech is even lower.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Diversity is making DC Comics great again | Vox (October 19): “”At the end of the day, [diversity] was just critical for us,” co-publisher Jim Lee told me. “This is something that we’ve been working on for years. We acknowledged that it was an issue. We could be doing a better job of it, and this is the first step toward that eventual goal.””

Nerd Culture is Not a Contest | She Geeks (December 14): “The “place” for women in geek culture (or any culture for that matter) is the same today as it has always been: Wherever the hell we want. There is no more a “place” for women than there is a specific “place” for men in geek culture.”

Content warning: descriptions of online harassment The Serial Swatter | The New York Times (November 24): “After being attacked, several victims reached out to Twitch, asking for information that they could give to detectives or for advice on how to protect themselves from further abuse.”

Sixteen years ago… | Jen Myers (December 17): “Suddenly, it occurred to me that I wasn’t alone, or at least didn’t always have to be. That maybe, out there in the larger world beyond an Ohio small town, there were still big new stories to be told, and even weird girls could tell them. Maybe they could even be in them.”

Finding support as a new senior (woman) leader | Lara Hogan (December 16): “As a female Senior Engineering Manager at a tech company, I’m in a weird spot. There are lots of women role models ahead of me who I look up to, and who I’m fortunate enough to call mentors. There are a bunch of women who I mentor, too, and many more women just entering the industry. However, I’ve found it difficult to find peers.”

Poker, Wikipedia, and the Singular They | Waxy (December 11): “Grammar manuals and copy editors may be slow to adapt to how the rest of the world uses language, but the increasing popularity of “they” reflects an increasingly gender-inclusive culture.”

Lowering the bar | Moishe’s Blog (December 16): “So, there are white men in positions of power (building an engineering org, deciding who to fund) implying that hiring diverse candidates means that some “bar” has to be “lowered.” Going back to Gould’s thesis, this is alarming in a) the false implication that diverse populations somehow don’t meet b) some reified “bar” that’s a projection of a mind-bogglingly complex set of traits which can basically really only be guessed at, with varying but generally low degrees of accuracy.”

What’s the Best Holiday Gift You Can Give? Fanfiction! | Tor.com (December 14): “Like a Secret Santa, participants are assigned to one another and try to come up with something that matches the recipient’s likes and personality. Unlike a Secret Santa, everyone is giving the same gift: a new piece of writing crafted for the special occasion.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Reframing the Responsibility Narrative Around Online Harassment | The Daily Beast: [content note: article has an alternate headline] “This is the root of victim blaming. Harassers’ responsibility for awful actions are eroded, such that a false image of power lies with the recipient of abuse. Instead of confronting harassers and abusers, people blame targets for taking action in response to abuse—to protect themselves and others, as in Ford’s case. “You got a man fired!” instead of “That’s what happens when you’re a jerk to someone.””

Speak Up & Stay Safe(r): | A Guide to Protecting Yourself From Online Harassment: “This guide is for anyone who fears they might be targeted, or who is already under attack, for speaking their mind online, but is especially designed for women, people of color, trans and genderqueer people, and everyone else whose existing oppressions are made worse by digital violence. It details best security practices for social media, email, online gaming, website platforms, and ensuring privacy of personal information online, as well as the documentation and reporting of harassment, and caring for yourself emotionally during an online attack. You don’t need any specialized knowledge to use this guide – just basic computer and internet skills.”

The New Intimacy Economy | Thoughts on Media – Medium: : “Pretending at closeness is really the only way forward for anyone who wants to make money on the internet. As such, watch as organizations pretend, with increasing intensity, that they are individuals. Start counting how many times platforms, services and websites entreat you in human voices, with awkward humor, for money. Watch as the things we expect to be invisible, utilitarian, start oozing emojis and winky-smileys. Even Silicon Valley, global epicenter of whitewashed empathy voids and 1-percenter sci-fi wank fantasies, is going to pretend it cares about you. Especially Silicon Valley. Ugh.”

Meet Three Straddlers in STEM: Bessie, Adrienne and Thacher | Autostraddle: “You all know how much I love talking about women in STEM. But do you know what I like even better? Talking to women in STEM! So for today, I thought I’d take some time to talk with a few kickass, super smart Straddlers who are crushing it in their respective fields: Bessie, Adrienne and Thacher.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Hey, Audiobooks, That’s Not What Women Sound Like | BookRiot (Dec 2): “I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I average a little over one a week, thanks to my commute. Like a lot of audiobook listeners, I have very strong opinions about what makes a good reader. Depending on the reader and the production, an audiobook performance can range from a one-man play with voices of all kinds to a mellow reading that’s almost too monotonous. The reader matters, but how they read matters more. And there’s one kind of reader that I can no longer tolerate: the male reader who “puts on” a female voice. You know the one I’m talking about.”

Fallout 4 and Gender Roles | The Mary Sue (Dec 3): “The Fallout franchise, being heavily influenced by the imagery and iconography of 50’s and 60’s Americana, has always been rather tongue-in-cheek with its presentation of traditional gender roles. Or, as my professor put it: “It’s like the Stepford wives meets Terminator.” As apt a description of the series as I’ve ever heard.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

How Period Trackers Have Changed Girl Culture | The New York Times (November 12): “When you see a technology that someone has developed specifically for you as a woman, it really legitimizes talking about your periods and thinking about them,” said Shuangyi “E.E.” Hou, 24, a product designer in San Francisco for apps and websites who has used a period tracker app for over a year. “If we as a society say women should be checking in on their periods, and we give them permission to talk about it, I’m convinced it will be beneficial for women’s health.””

The hidden costs of tech diversity efforts | Adrienne Porter Felt on Medium (November 23): “Mentorship takes time that otherwise would be spent on engineering, rest, or family. Sometimes mentorship events are multi-day affairs that require preparation and travel from the speakers. Regardless of the format, it’s also typically work that requires emotional labor. And all of this work is expected to be done for free, as a favor to the community.
What else can we do?”

Can computers be racist? Big data, inequality, and discrimination | Ford Foundation (November 18): “while we’re lead to believe that data doesn’t lie—and therefore, that algorithms that analyze the data can’t be prejudiced—that isn’t always true. The origin of the prejudice is not necessarily embedded in the algorithm itself: Rather, it is in the models used to process massive amounts of available data and the adaptive nature of the algorithm. As an adaptive algorithm is used, it can learn societal biases it observes.”

Your Pipeline Argument Is Bullshit | Don’t Lean In. Lean Angry. (August 2): “Your pipeline argument is bullshit. Stop using it. Spend some time on this question: Where did all the senior women go and what are we doing to increase the representation of senior women now?…Your goal is to get at least 25% in senior roles. Not overall representation. Senior roles. Because those women exist.”

Hey White Women- Stop Championing Diversity In Tech | Lyn Muldrow on Medium (November 27): “Ask yourself — when you stand up on stage to talk about the “problem” with exclusionary practices, are you only considering yourself as the one being excluded? Are you truly, honestly thinking about the little black and latina girls who aren’t a part of the Women In Tech movement, aside from programs that have been exclusively created to cater to them? Because most times I join a thing about women in tech, I’m one of very few black women there. WHY?”

Women, minorities, and the Manhattan Project | The Nuclear Secrecy Project (November 27): “more women worked on the bomb than worked on the program to get Americans on the Moon. Why such a disparity? Because during World War II, the need for scientific labor was desperate and spread among many projects. It’s hard to be a bigot when you need every ounce of brainpower and labor you can get, and indeed World War II is famous overall for its movement of women into spaces they had previously been excluded (i.e. Rosie the Riveter).”

What is hacker culture? | Matthew Garrett (November 29): “we will win because free software is accessible to more of society than proprietary software. And for that to be true, it must be possible for our communities to be accessible to anybody who can contribute, regardless of their background.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).